


The Weather in Bristol

by Gleaming_Spires (cuppaktea)



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett
Genre: I really love Irwin ok fight me, I'm experimenting here bear with me, M/M, Pre-Canon, The History Boys Fictober, You Have Been Warned, like tons of it, parental homophobia, set in the 1970s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 05:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuppaktea/pseuds/Gleaming_Spires
Summary: A phone call from home can sometimes be trying at the best of times. For Tom, this is not the best of times.





	The Weather in Bristol

**Author's Note:**

> There is no way Irwin got so awkward and touchy about his sexuality from having a supportive upbringing so I had a go at working backwards. The poor little messed up cookie needs some love (of the fic kind as well as the Dakin kind).
> 
> Incidentally, most of the horrible things Mrs Irwin says are things that I have actually heard from people :(

 

 

It’s a particularly dejected Tom Irwin who is sitting alone in the house this evening. His housemates had made a small effort to persuade him to come out but he’d moodily shrugged them all off and they weren’t ready to waste valuable drinking time trying to lift him out of his sulk.

 

When the phone starts ringing in the kitchen his first impulse (well, the second, after jumping half out of his skin) is to ignore it, but it’s one of those old-fashioned ones where the ringing is designed to wake the owner up from halfway across a grand country house. It won’t be for him - not unless it’s Mike, and Tom is enough of a realist that he’s not anticipating a call begging for him back – and everyone else is out.

 

He waits it out from under his duvet, relief washing over him when it eventually falls silent, only for it to start up again two minutes later.

 

Reluctantly, he wipes his face on his sleeve and hauls himself out of bed and down the short hallway, prepared to snap at whoever it is that they’d better call later and leave him to wallow in peace.

 

Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, his mother’s gently chiding voice greets him.

 

“Hello, is that Tom? Hello, Darling. I haven’t heard from you in ages, you might call more often.”

 

“Sorry, Mum.” He mutters. Truthfully he hadn’t known if it would be welcome.

 

“Have you got a cold? You sound a bit stuffy”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Make sure you wrap up warm, I hear these student places can be drafty”

 

They talk for a bit about his course and how badly they’ve been affected by the power cuts at home.

 

He’s just starting to feel on even ground and thinking that maybe she really did phone up for a friendly chat and that perhaps everything that happened at Christmas is history now, when she comes to the point.

 

“I was in the library yesterday looking for something to help us with our problem and the woman there let me have these leaflets all about it.”

 

“Er… what problem are you having, Mum?” asks Tom, confused and a little concerned. He wracks his brain for something she’s already mentioned – truth be told he hasn’t been listening with rapt attention.

 

“Well…” She clears her throat delicately. “That is to say _your_ problem.”

 

The penny drops and lands painfully in his brain. Just when he was starting to feel a bit better, too.

 

Without waiting for a response, his mother summarizes the literature for him, which, as far as he can gather, is aimed at parents of gay teens and seeks to inform them about what it means to be gay (not that they use the word.  _‘Homosexual’_ being the preferred, more clinical term). The main aim, of course, is not to inform but rather to persuade said parents to try and talk their children out of it.

 

He can hear the sodding (he thinks the word with a vicious thrill of rebellion) things being rustled near the receiver.

 

After rattling off a brief synopsis in a breathless rush she gets to work proving the propaganda has found its target, explaining to him why _it’s such a bad life choice_.

 

The cut and thrust of the argument seem to be primarily concerned with moral decline and, particularly, promiscuity.

 

This is especially hard on Tom who has only ever met one person willing to have sex with him and _he's_ just dumped him.

 

"Mum, it wasn't like that with me and Mike." 

 

She pauses.

 

" _Wasn’t?_ That's over with now, is it? I wish you’d said - that _is_ a relief. Most of the pamphlets I picked up from the nice woman at the library said that it’s probably a normal part of growing up - a lot of young men get confused apparently. She was very understanding and said it’s normal for people to want to experiment at your age. Although I’m sure we didn’t do any of that in my day, we just got on with things."

 

"No, Mum, it’s not like that. He left me” His voice sounds pathetically small to his own ears.

 

“I'm actually quite upset about it." A fresh rush of self-hatred accompanies the admission, burning his eyes and throat.

 

There's a pause while she recalibrates. "It's probably for the best, darling."

 

"I still like men in case you’re hoping otherwise." He says, locking eyes with the full-length David Bowie poster on the back of the door.

 

She sighs, wearily. “And you still want to go into teaching, do you? Because I’m not sure they’ll take you. Everybody I talk to says the same.”

 

“Mum!” He flashes hot with mortification as he imagines her discussing his sexuality and whether or not it means he touches up kids, while in the line at the greengrocers. “It’s private!”

 

“Now it’s private. At Christmas, you said it was important we all knew about it.”

 

“Not strangers”

 

“I have to talk to someone. I don’t know what this is doing to your poor father, I daren’t mention it to him.”

 

“It shouldn’t be a complete mystery to him, he did do National Service, after all.” He snaps, still smarting from the previous remark.

 

“He says a bit of that would sort you out.”

 

Why his father apparently thinks that spending two years in close confinement with a lot of soldiers would help him turn out straight, Tom can’t think.

 

“An all boys school didn’t have any effect.” He mutters, sulkily, only half intending her to hear.

 

“It’s the discipline, he says.”

 

“The combined ideas of Dad and military discipline are probably enough to put me off sex for life, so he may be right.”

 

“That’s more than enough of that sort of language, thank you.”

 

Tom fancies he can hear her pursing her lips down the phone. She clears her throat again before continuing. He can hear the rustling of the literature near the phone again.

 

“I’ve been reading all about it and I'm sure that sort of thing can’t be good for you, medically speaking. "

 

Tom feels himself go cold and blush red somehow simultaneously.

 

"Jesus, Mum!"

 

"Thomas, you know I dislike blasphemy." She scolds.

 

Blasphemy and his newly embraced love of cock: the two things his mother irredeemably disapproves of in him. That and, he suspects, the fact that he failed to get into Oxford.

 

"I am not discussing this with you. If you're worried talk to Dad."

 

"I don't know why you think he would know anything about it"

 

"Because he's a doctor."

 

"Yes, but your father’s a GP, not a psychiatrist, his patients are all normal people.”

 

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose, hard. It doesn’t help, so it seems increasingly unlikely that he is in the throes of a bad dream.

 

"Can we change the subject please?"

 

"Very well. Your sister’s expected to do very well in her A-levels, all her teachers say so. We're very proud "

 

"Great." He tries to keep the bitterness from his voice.

 

"What's the weather like in Bristol?"

 

“Fine”

 

"I do hope she can get in somewhere good.”

 

“Not like me, you mean?”

 

“Nonsense, Bristol’s very good, I hear. Margaret’s Patricia is there, you know.” She imbues this with a significance that suggests Patricia is on par in her opinion with Princess Anne

“Do you talk to her at all? I’ll give you her telephone number. I think it would be a nice idea for the two of you to have a cup of tea together. She’s a very nice girl.”

 

He makes frequent attempts to interrupt the flood of information and inform his mother that he isn’t interested in getting the number of Patricia, the daughter of one of her colleagues (who he met once, when their mothers bumped into each other while out shopping in about 1972, and who he wouldn’t be able to pick out of a line-up, let alone recognize on campus). He never gets the chance to say any of this, but eventually, she runs out of steam and changes the subject again.

 

“I would like your sister to live at home while she studies, if possible. I saw a lot of students today on a march in the city and half the men were very scruffy looking with terribly long hair and these awful beards"

 

Tom absently strokes his own wispy attempt at a week’s growth - he's getting rid of it tomorrow. His hair is the same: too fine to look rebellious. Not at all like the bloke Mike was with on campus today, who aside from being drop-dead gorgeous had a beard like a Greek god.

 

"How they hope to get a job looking like that, I don't know. I wouldn't want her getting in with those sorts of people."

 

His younger sister is a far more successful rebel than Tom’s ever managed to be, but unlike him, she has always managed to escape their parents’ eagle eyes when it suits her.

 

“They might encourage her to experiment with drugs if she got in with a crowd like that.”

 

Tom gives his mother a non-committal sound of agreement. He knows his sister is partial to the odd joint already, but he isn’t about to rat her out. She’s the only member of his family who doesn’t treat him like he belongs in a mental home these days.

 

“We have quite enough of experimenting right now.”

 

“You do know you that it’s me you’re talking to?”

 

“Thomas, don’t be saucy, please.”

 

“Look, I’ve got a lot of reading to do for tomorrow, I’d better be off.”

 

“Alright, darling. Make sure you wrap up warm. I’ll send you those leaflets anyway along with Patricia’s address.”

 

“Bye, Mum.”

 

He drops the receiver into its cradle without waiting for a response.

 

He’s tempted to keep the beard a few more days, now. As he doesn’t intend to leave the house for at least a week he may as well – a pathetic attempt at rebellion, but it makes him feel better.

 

He shuffles back to his room and the sanctuary of his duvet. One thing his mother ought to be pleased about: he’s wrapping up warm.


End file.
